For connoisseurs of
Pinoy parodies, the recent appearance on Filipino VCD of Dolphy's
Bond-like action comedy Napoleon Doble And The Sexy Six signals an
unearthing of grail-like proportions. I realize it's hard to be
entirely objective about comedy, and even more so when you're removed
from its host culture by time, language, and the shared experience of
growing up in the shadow of Dolphy's schtick. To this pulp-addled
brain at least it was worth the wait, but keep in mind I've already
devoured over twenty of Dolphy's back catalogue and haven't even made
a dent. If you're a casual Trash Tourist, a cursory examination of
Napoleon Doble...'s discs reveals a film that looks, sounds and feels
like Dolphy's James Batman, also from 1966. Actually you're not far
from the mark: it's a similarly crazed surfadelic romp through
appropriated Sixties pop culture, with wildly tilted camera angles,
cartoon goons and go-go girls, and the omniscient Dolphy filling
almost every frame – and sometimes twice! However, in order to
rescue Napoleon Doble... from history's “like James Batman but not
as silly” bin and place it into some kind of cultural context,
there are a number of facts to consider.

In a career covering
an astounding 250-plus features to date, 1966 was Dolphy's peak year:
starring roles in nineteen features, or almost one movie a fortnight.
In Dolphy's peak period from '65-'66, Luis San Juan was writer,
producer or director for seven films, including an executive producer
role for LSJ Productions' Napoleon Doble. The sheer volume of
Dolphy's output suggests a much larger, well-oiled machine grinding
out quickly-made and comfortably generic - though certainly not
inferior - product, with the Dolphy brand ensuring audience goodwill
and return trade. In the '65 to '66 period, Dolphy's films were
primarily “goon” parodies, or more precisely, spoofs on
then-popular trends with dedicated action sequences; as a trained
dancer and physical comedian, Dolphy was a natural, if unlikely,
action star. In contrast to his lighter Sampaguita vehicles from the
Fifties and early Sixties, Goon Comedies downplayed frothy romance
and song and dance numbers in favour of relentless stunts and
on-screen fist fights. In his western spoofs [1] he's
eyeball-to-eyeball with a baddie in a black hat and an army of apes
in stetsons; in Pambihirang Dalawa: Sa Combat (1966) it's him,
Panchito and a bevy of women in long skirts against the Japanese
army.

During Dolphy's
busiest phase, the genre du jour was the James Bond craze. Most
Western-influenced film cultures were churning out one gadget-laden
spy caper after the other, and the Philippines' copycat industry was
more eager than most. Following Goldfinger's worldwide release in
1964, no fewer than twenty Pinoy Bonds appeared within a manic two
year cycle. And, as every popular Pinoy genre must have its parodic
mirror, so too did the Bond Parodies begin in earnest, most notably
from the dual Kings of Comedy: Chiquito as James Bandong or Agent
0-2-10 (“oh-two-ten” is a play on “utoten”, the Tagalog word
for “farter” for “fart-face”), and Dolphy as Agent 1-2-3 (the
name suggests a person's been tricked) or in variations on the
“Dolpinger” theme. In Dolphy's filmography from 1965 to 1966, a
minimum of fifteen features can lay claim to parodying the spy genre,
or at least include elements of the Bond films [3] – and that's a
considerable number of Bondian villains with goon armies at their
disposal.

Opening bank heist:
Dolphy shoots at himself

As Napoleon Doble,
Dolphy trades in his secret agent badge for one with the NBI [4]. The
film opens in wham-bam style, with Napoleon shooting it out with
machine guns as his nemesis Elias (also Dolphy, much-gnarled but,
under the latex buboes, still recognizable) robs a bank and makes a
hasty getaway. The Thirties gangster-style car crashes and somehow
Elias drags the stolen loot back to his mansion hideaway, where
Girlfriend Number One (Lucita Soriano) and his trusted
scientist-slash-plastic surgeon (Carlos Diaz) perform a face-changing
operation – under strict orders to make him look JUST like Napoleon
Doble.

Lumpy-faced Elias
and his new sardonic sneer

Elias, the dark Hyde
to Dolphy's likeable Pinoy Everyman, is a hoot: cold, calculating
slits for eyes and a sardonic smirk, and with a harem of five
girlfriends on call, all top-shelf Pinoy starlets who are forced to
line up and have their cocktail frocks ripped down in one of Elias'
cleavage inspections! Not content with merely a Foxy Five, Elias
decides to recruit a sexy Sixth, and as fate would have it, stalks
the gorgeous Anna (Lourdes Mendel), a dancer at his own nightclub –
and, the same girl courted by Napoleon. Anna, of course, only has
eyes for the REAL Napoleon, yet Elias is undeterred, and takes her
refusal to bare her cleavage as a sign she's the new Number One
Girlfriend, a position jealously fought over by the Sexy Five in a
messy, drunken, all-in catfight. A complicated web of mistaken
identities – that old hackneyed comedic standby! - ensues, with
Elias stealing NBI files while posing as Napoleon, and ends with
Napoleon and Anna trapped in a cell in Elias' mansion at the mercy of
a leering, power-hungry and clearly insane Elias.

The Sexy Six cattle
call (top) and catfight (bottom)

Viewed as part of a
much larger whole, Napoleon Doble And The Sexy Six makes perfect
sense. Dolphy's individual films are elements of a much grander story
arc, almost a meta-narrative spread over fifty-plus years, with its
main protagonist growing older disgracefully, and his supporting cast
and crew entering and leaving at will, more often than not becoming
familiar parts of the background scenery. Wives, girlfriends and
siblings appear, along with children and eventually grandchildren.
Families are at the core of Filipino culture and is reflected in the
Dolphy's own film company RVQ Productions: from its inception in 1967
and through its Glory Days into the Eighties, it was a dynastic
studio dynamo for the Quizon clan, and Dolphy more than generously
shared, and still shares, the limelight. The cherry-picked icons from
both foreign and domestic pop culture, the interchangeable plotlines
of Western spoofs and goon comedies, domestic barrio soap operas and
their ilk, the recycled characters (the droopy-shouldered Ompong, the
flamboyant Pacifica Falayfay), the movies, radio shows, stage
performances and TV series, are all episodes of a seemingly endless
variety show, with Dolphy centre stage as its amiable emcee.

Although Dolphy's
Napoleon Doble presents himself to the filmic world as an undercover
policeman, he's essentially Dolpinger: a government representative of
the forces of Good, facing off against a Super Villain with a lair
choked to the brim with Bondian gadgets (a pen, for instance, that
doubles as a Ray Gun!), not to mention his very own Q on tap. Bond
allusions aside, Dolphy takes characteristically low swipes at other
Sixties pop icons, not least The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - Napoleon
“Solo” being the obvious reference point, plus a sizeable portion
from U.N.C.L.E. feature The Spy With My Face (1965). Let's not forget
the Pink Panther series, notably Ponga's Kato-like Mr Tan [5], a
Chinese caricature saved by Napoleon during the bank robbery, and
whose housebound karate fights with Napoleon usually end up trounced
by the equally chop-frenzied maid (Aruray).

“Thrifty” is is
not a surprising term for a low-budget quickie, and there are
constant reminders of the budgetary shortcomings, from the use of
limited locations (Elias' mansion, with its now-familiar warren of
rooms, balconies and shadow-lined stairwell is put through the
ringer, as is his nightclub) to its tin-can sound recording and
compact, cut-to-order thrills. As rough as the seams are, however,
the film never threatens to tear a hole in its pants' seat; LSJ
Productions' camera crew are imaginative with their comic-strip
framing and composition, not to mention weirdly effective though
glaringly primitive lighting techniques, and Restie Umali's
horns-and-bongos jazz score, despite its occasional Bond stings,
never becomes glaringly cliched. Like most populist Pinoy films,
Napoleon... trots out its regulation array of marquee-value “Special
Guests” like well-rehearsed sideshow exhibits - the big-chinned
Babalu (one of Dolphy's regular sidekick in his later films) makes a
blink-and-he's-gone cameo as a shirtless waiter, crone-ish Menggay
tries out as the Sexy Sixth (and is accused of being less than
human!). It's modest yet easy money for an afternoon's work, and all
are welcome faces, along with the remainder of Napoleon Doble's cast:
Sancho Tessalona, Rodolfo “Boy” Garcia, Prospero Luna, the SOS
Daredevils and many others, some of the hardest working actors and
stuntmen in show business and equally at home in a Fernando Poe Jr or
Dolphy and Chiquito flick.

Elias menaces the
helpless Anna (Lourdes Mendel)

Likewise, Luis San
Juan successfully balanced straight action films and “goon” or
action parodies over a thirty year career as producer/writer/director
– from Dolphy and Chiquito vehicles to Ramon Zamora and Rey Malonzo
chop-sockeys. It's this double helix of thrall and gall, the essence
of Goon combined with the sheer chutzpah of James Batman and company,
that makes Napoleon Doble And The Sexy Six a satisfying Sixties pop
cocktail, brimming with pure unadulterated Pinoy Pulp.

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HERR LEAVOLD

Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a film-maker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His writing has been published globally in mainstream magazines, academic journals and underground cinema fanzines, for the last two decades.

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013). His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, and throughout the Philippines. Leavold teamed with Daniel Palisa to co-direct The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), both a feature-length documentary on the late Filipino action idol Rudy Fernandez, and a dissection of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the Philippines’ pyramid of power.

He is currently shooting two new feature-length documentaries – The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth (also with Palisa), the third in his Filipino trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of the vibrant St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2018.